


What Holds

by cognomen



Category: Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, Corporate Fuckery, F/M, Hospital, Injury Recovery, M/M, Multi, Shit talking, Vignettes, Whump, loose polyamory, mid to end game timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:15:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 8,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25122265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: Elena doesn't really miss the plate, or Midgar, or the whole company with its massive buildings like waving flags stuck in the landscape. She doesn't miss her sister, either, not with the sharp ache that she misses belonging in one place.The calamity—the series of them—has scattered the places she belongs at any given moment over the map. There's a crater at the north pole and a bar at Costa del Sol and at least two men in at least two hospitals, and only one Elena. Just at the moment of her belonging, the space that came to exist for her has shattered.-A series of vignettes in the past and around a hospital bed, a course of recovery and a path of connection.
Relationships: Elena & Tseng (Compilation of FFVII), Reno & Tseng (Compilation of FFVII), Rude & Tseng (Compilation of FFVII), Rufus Shinra/Tseng, Tseng/Veld (Compilation of FFVII), other implied relationships
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

Elena doesn't really miss the plate, or Midgar, or the whole company with its massive buildings like waving flags stuck in the landscape. She doesn't miss her sister, either, not with the sharp ache that she misses belonging in one place.

The calamity—the series of them—has scattered the places she belongs at any given moment over the map. There's a crater at the north pole and a bar at Costa del Sol and at least two men in at least two hospitals, and only one Elena. Just at the moment of her belonging, the space that came to exist for her has shattered.

"Just my luck," she tells Tseng's bandages. Elena props her chin up in her hands and leans at his bedside. "Right when I figure everything out, it all changes again."

The doctors, doing the best they could or so Elena imagined, have given her only guarded hope. Tseng came dressed in the ruins of a blue suit, and on a helicopter marked _ShinRa_. It was better to hope the intimidation still held than to assume they'd let him die out of spite. Maybe they're too busy to differentiate much. Every few minutes shouting erupts in the hallway, a rush of bodies, a mass of medical jargon passes yelling through the arteries of the hospital. The first hundred times, it alarmed her. Now, she's only dimly aware that somewhere, tragedy outside her life is happening. A tragedy that _isn't_ her life, is perhaps the best method of considering it.

"Boss," she says. "You better come around. What were you even thinking, facing up to Sephiroth alone?"

She thinks he probably wasn't. Sephiroth—the thing calling itself Sephiroth—has an unnerving ability to show up where he was least wanted these days. Since he's started appearing again at all, on whatever mad quest it was that he was on. Maybe, Tseng tried to speak to him. Tseng had been a part of ShinRa even since those distant days. He'd known all three of them: man, mirror, and shadow. 

Elena is kind of glad she doesn't. She's going to shoot Sephiroth, if she ever sees him. Probably Cloud, too. Perhaps he has no taste for dialogue, not like the men she knew best how to handle—board room men, corporate politicians. He'll get a taste of her knuckles, though, for claiming to act solely out of caring and crashing through lives like a wrecking ball.

"All those dominoes," she says, still talking to an inert form—no one has told her if Tseng's aware of her, if consciousness is close to the surface. She keeps talking to him anyway, better out than in. "Maybe next time we should line up bricks."


	2. Chapter 2

"Why don't you put a bullet in him?" Veld asks Vincent. Brown eyes turn up from his beer and meet Veld's. They are young men, still.

"Against company policy," he answers, showing one incisor as his mouth tries to twist up into a smile. He manages a leer. "Something about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. No matter how ugly it—and the eggs—are."

"Ganders don't lay eggs," Veld says.

"This one does," Vincent corrects, eying him. "Shouldn't you be on the other side of this conversation?"

Veld smiles, briefly. It is not a reassurance—none of his expressions are.

"I get to talk about shooting whoever I want," Veld says. "Job perk."

"Except the President," Vincent suggests.

"There are days I think about it," Veld admits. "He doesn't make it easy."

"Ranks are almost big enough to split off and get away," Vincent says. His eyes settle on Veld and hold. _He knows._

"Imagine that," Veld says, drifting tone and wandering eyes. He picks up his beer as a defense, pulls a tiny gnat out from the frothy foam before he sips, looking over the rim and out at the beach. _Eat outside, see the sun. Flies in your beer._ Alluring. 

"So is that why you're telling me to shoot Hojo?" Vincent asks. "As an excuse to break clean?"

"We both know that there's no clean break for you," Veld says. He has another swallow, and crisp bitter tang rolls over his tongue. "You have too many dividing lines of loyalty."

He doesn't like it—Veld is too attached to Vincent to see him vivisected on the table of company politics. His heart was too involved.

"You're more loyal than you pretend," Vincent says. He's looking at the surf now, too. Bodies in bathing suits tickling the edges of the ocean, flirting with something they could not know the depths of.

"My loyalty is bought," Veld says, a line of truth in the lie. "The currency varies."

"And you say I'm complicated."

"Only in bed."

Vincent is quieted by that. When he is wearing his armor, he doesn't like to be thought of in his vulnerable moments. With his blue clad back soaking up sunlight and his work boots sinking into sandy beach below the table, he is still on guard. Veld turns his wedding ring around on his finger. There's lettering on the inside and it moves over thin skin and bone and makes an impression.

"Who is going with you?" Vincent asks, driving back in time. Circular conversation.

"Not sure," Veld says. "Promises aren't good 'till after they're kept. It's a ways in the future, yet."

"What about your protege?"

Dark eyes, pale skin. An expanse of black hair swept over clean white sheets. Images that write themselves in the back of Veld's mind, not quite guilty. Veld is good at infidelity—on writing compartments for things into his thoughts. He hasn't been home in too long. _Missed a birthday,_ he thinks.

"Tseng's tricky," Veld begins. "I picked well—maybe _too_ well. He has bad honor and good honor."

Vincent snorts. "It's what's left of Wutai in him."

"Those old ways rot," Veld answers. "But they don't disintegrate."

Not in one man's lifetime, anyway. They just become difficult footing, a place to turn the ankle of your thoughts.

"ShinRa leaves him to babysit a lot," Vincent says.

" _I_ do, too," Veld admits. Another sip—there seems to be sand on his tongue, but the beer washes clean. "He's a good influence. Rufus isn't a lost cause."

"You don't worry what's going to rub off on Tseng?"

Veld's answer is wordless. The potential for harm was less than the potential for help.

"So you're going to leave him behind."

Another wordless sound, then; "It's a long way yet."

"You do have a heart," Vincent says.

Veld shakes his head. "Know thine enemy."

"Don't give me that _Loveless_ shit," Vincent says. "You'd still have eyes and ears in."

 _Not clear ones_ , Veld thinks. He doesn't think, either, that Vincent's path is clear enough that a failsafe is unnecessary. When things come to a head, Vincent will think of Lucretia first. It will make his finger hesitant on the trigger. Veld is too old to trust body promises or ties made in lust or the languages that are old and familiar. Languages died every day, promises meant nothing until the point of keeping.

-


	3. Chapter 3

In ShinRa they play the game of rotating bedrooms and flexible partnerships. Not like some other companies where scandal was what spiced life up, where whispers at lunch were daggers in the back when someone noticed—or _thought_ they noticed—a ten minute change in ritual. Instead, by mutual agreement, upper management decides simply not to care. Enough of the rumors are true in enough ways. Not every set of partners that gets whispered like dirty words between preschoolers really ever happens, but usually within far fewer than six degrees of separation.

Within a specific circle, everyone is fucking each other, regardless of whether between two individuals penetration or congress has ever occurred. This makes rumors an outside and harmless force in the face of a united front. It also makes deliberate exclusion a slight; a pointed denial is a weapon in its own right.

It's a functional system.

It's difficult, sometimes, for newcomers. There's usually—at as opportune a time as can be made—a discussion. Blue suits— _administrative research_ —tend to get it early. High octane jobs, high caliber stress relief. Still, when shit hit the fan, it could fall by the wayside. Elena has, since, had the time made for an appropriate negotiation. The interim had been difficult to navigate. It seems strange now, sitting in a hospital room and reflecting in the hours of silence she has to fill, that she felt that trepidation—big word, _school_ word—to ask someone the whole company assumed by default that she was already sleeping with for time enough to have dinner. With the vitality required of the TURKS, she survived.

"It's funny," she tells Tseng, sitting by his hospital bed after the world has ended. Rufus is in another hospital. The rest of Midgar is on the ground; dead or dying. "It's probably not much of a 'good girl' thing to feel like sex club—or whatever it was Reno called it—is everything I ever wanted. Just to feel like I belong somewhere and absolutely everyone has my back." 

She pauses. "It's probably funny that I even still want to pass by 'good girl' standards at all."

She admits it, with a gun in a holster against her ribs. Tseng won't mind. He's unconscious, and everything else is slowly imploding. If there's a time for honesty, this is it. Tseng doesn't answer.

His chest is so many bandages, his face so much hospital apparatus. Uncovered are his eyes—closed, peaceful expression. His skin is light for his heritage, and she only notices because of how dark the sweep of his eyelashes are against his cheekbones. The little vulnerable hollows at the bottom of his eye sockets. At the moment these are dark, bruised looking. That may be only the tired hospital lighting.

She wishes they could have kept him in the hospital up on the plate. For that to happen, the plate would need to still exist.  
-


	4. Chapter 4

"Why," Rufus asks, watching, criticizing, judging—as ever. It's how he's been taught. "Do you use such a small caliber rifle?"

Veld's expression doesn't change. It doesn't ever seem to unless one is looking him dead in the face, and even then whatever it is only moves in the depths of his eyes, a beast turning over in the swamp without breaking the surface of the water. Still, the flavor of the air around him almost changes. _Should be evident._ , Rufus thinks. No one says the words.

"A standard velocity .22 LR rifle round has enough penetrative power to enter a human skull," Veld says, with all the dry intonation of a car and driver magazine, and the same boring factual presentation. "Having penetrated..."

His tone is scratchy, dry. Veld lifts the rifle to his shoulder again, pressing his cheek to the stock, bracing his hand comfortably beneath the forestock and the other curled under and around the trigger with his finger outside of the guard. He lets the gun sling out long, and Rufus can see even now it makes a complete loop around the elbow of his right arm. No one would untangle Veld from his gun easily.

"It will have spent the majority of its power. It doesn't have enough velocity to _exit_ the skull again," Veld continues. He pulls the trigger. A hole appears in the target and a muffled crack of broken sound—barrier hammers Rufus' hearing protection.

Veld's tone develops the slightest tick of expression. He resettles the gun against his collar bone. "Instead, it ricochets around inside the cranium, turning what's inside into pulp. The better definition of 'head cheese'."

Veld savors the words. Rufus wonders if he practices creepy shit in front of the mirror in his apartment, or if he'd been born knowing how best to maximize on terror. He wonders if Veld's mother had ever felt the urge to hold his head under when giving him his nightly bath, sensing how unholy he was in his core. Then Veld flashes Rufus a smile, real and incisor-ful. _You asked._

Rufus does not need to watch the target work. He's not learning—he pays a considerable amount of money to be certain he never has to touch a gun—and he's not particularly interested in seeing a known quantity put seven bullets into a hole the size of a quarter in the upward bend of a silhouettes head on paper. He wants the other skill.

"Tell me about Tseng," he says, unsubtly. No obfuscation would pass under Veld's gaze, so Rufus makes no effort.

"Works for me," Veld says, summarily. "By extension, for your father. By extension to _that_ , he does some bad shit."

Veld swears easily . Rufus still sometimes hesitates like the ghost of his mother is waiting to correct him.

"That's not what I meant," Rufus says.

"I _sell_ intelligence," Veld tells him.

"We pay you for it," Rufus reminds, feeling like a very small child again. He does, and often around his father's men, have a great awareness of his age. Veld can look at him and see all the way back to his first piano recital.

"Your father pays me for it," Veld corrects, and then—to take some of the sting and personal responsibility out of it; "he also pays me for my discretion with certain company."

That's information Rufus hadn't had before. His father thinks of him? Surprise stirs over in the cage of his ribs, but does not escape.

"My father doesn't want me to have this specific information?" Rufus asks—of all the parts and workings he could poke his nose into, this seemed harmless. It wasn't the inner workings of the SOLDIER program, or how Mako actually functioned in relation to the planet and its life force.

This was not that they kept Sephiroth's 'mother' in a technologically impressive _jar_ under a reactor in a backwater mountain town. Rufus has all that already, churning around in the back of his mind. Real weapons.

It's the equivalent of passing notes in class—of a request for a PHS number.

"Don't think he wants you to think of us as human," Veld says, rapid-fire and quiet. "He's possessive with his things."

Rufus doesn't care for the implication—about Tseng _or_ his father—and he looks sharply at Veld, trying to pull any subtext from features as impenetrable as those carved into the mountains at Wutai. He trusts that the man gives few enough shits to have used a vulgarity if he meant what Rufus feared. Veld neither puts him at ease nor his teeth on edge. He pulls the trigger twice more then pulls the magazine out of the feed, slots a new one in. 

Veld resettles the rifle against his shoulder. A fear of getting rusty, Rufus thinks, as Veld's long bangs slide intimate over the wood grain of the stock, handsomely streaked in gray. It will never go fully, never surrender the last bit of its color while he's still alive. Someone will bounce a bullet around in Veld's cranium before that ever happens.

There are no number of repetitions that will keep the slowing that comes naturally with age at bay—like the trains lumbering on unstoppable from the coal mines to the old, hungry furnaces of the past. There is too much momentum to stop them before they are intended to stop. The same thing was happening with the whole course of the ShinRa energy industry, barreling along at an insane pace and yet utterly unstoppable in their momentum. You couldn't just turn the whole company around. Ultimately, this will be good for Rufus, if he is patient.

He is not.

"Rufus," Veld says, looking along the sight and not at him. "No one can be issued a nondisclosure on themselves."

Rufus pulls his thoughts back from the skyscrapers. "I'm sorry?"

Veld rakes his gaze over Rufus once, doubtful. _I'm not sorry_ , Rufus thinks but doesn't say. _I just didn't hear._

"I'll only give you this advice one time," Veld says, pulling his gun off his shoulder and slinging it onto his back. Rufus instinctively checks the safety, since he knows the rifle to be loaded. _On._

"Ask him yourself."

-


	5. Chapter 5

There is no shattering of the quiet in the earliest hours of the morning, just a presence. Elena thinks she has been dozing, sleeping upright (mostly) in the chair with her hand extended over one arm to cover Tseng's. The arm is numb now, blood supply interrupted by the sharp edge of the wooden chair arm.

A man is standing on the other side of the hospital bed, looking down thoughtfully. The features are familiar to her, though he's older than she remembers. Not much of a surprise—she'd last seen Veld when her sister was still alive.

"I didn't mean to wake you," he says, but doesn't apologize. He doesn't care that he woke her—not afraid of being seen here, not even if it were broad daylight. What could she—or ShinRa—do about it?

"It's alright sir," She says. "I was barely sleeping."

He offers no response to her title of respect — he's not looking at her but down at Tseng. "He's really in it this time."

Elena stretches. She feels rumpled, her hair unwashed and touching her forehead unpleasantly, the back of her neck. "That's what the doctor's say."

"I've always told him to bring a gun to a sword fight," Veld says. He reaches out a rough-weathered and scarred hand—not the prosthetic—and curls it over the pale, bloodless back of Tseng's hand. For Veld, the touch is surprising. Elena can count on one hand how many times she's seen him display affection outwardly.

"I don't think it matters with Sephiroth, sir," she says.

Veld nods, and pulls his hand back. He tucks it into his pocket—he's casually dressed; a heavy sweater, a leather motorcycle jacket that Elena wouldn't dare blame on a midlife crisis. "He wouldn't have shot anyway. He knew Sephiroth, back when you _could_ know Sephiroth."

Tseng seems to have known everyone—Valentine, Veld, Zack, even Cloud, through proximity. Elena thinks he's the link of consistency between the old guard and the new. _Well_ , she allows, _I may have some bias._

"He does try to heal old wounds," she says.

Veld's mouth quirks up at one side. "He should focus on healing new ones."

She doesn't disagree. Veld is here to satisfy something for himself—Tseng's survival or his leadership in Veld's absence or both. He won't stay, because he doesn't need to. He won't stay, also, because he is a ghost.

Veld reaches down again and pats Tseng's shoulder—one of the few undamaged areas on his body. Then he turns to go. He doesn't have to tell Elena not to mention that he was here; she wears the suit, she knows. She feels somehow that she's won his approval.

At the door, he pauses. "He shot me once, you know."

"I know," she says.

"I haven't thanked him for it yet. I expect to get the chance."

-


	6. Chapter 6

Junon. Summertime. Rufus in a crisp white suit, slowly sweating through it. There is enough humidity in the air to make his shirt an uneven, sticky plaster against his back and leave the vulnerable hollows beneath his chin dripping down into his collar annoyingly. Every corner, every _inch_ of Shinra operations in Junon exhales hot steam out into the streets. Rufus cannot think of a more hellish exile than this in the mortal realm. He thinks of it like the lap of Hades himself, the canon under construction an obvious jut of anatomy, and Hades breathing down in lewd, anticipatory fashion on the back of Rufus' neck. He does not concede a single layer to the heat, never gives in to confide his suffering in General Heidegger, even when Heidegger himself has stripped to his undershirt and revealed his bulging and hairy belly. Willingly taking off all his medals and gold—plated decorations.

Rufus doesn't trust the show. He sat in through enough board meetings—enough fat old men yelling and calming themselves and yelling again over profit and programs to know that Executives are not like Turks. What they wear isn't armor; it can't be set aside for pleasurable evenings or enticing company. _The asshole goes bone deep,_ Reno said once. _I'm only an asshole 'till you take my coat off._

At the time it had been a suggestion. Rufus had discovered that Reno was an asshole a little deeper than just one layer, but he hadn't minded. He never did. He'd kept what he could and let go of the rest. Three loyal dogs—three points of real, human contact in all of ShinRa and he could hope for all that to last just long enough. His father was an old man, and all the king's horses, all the king's men—all his disturbing scientific research and genetic half monsters and SOLDIER serums had not yet halted age.

He'd shoot Hojo himself if he ever looked up from that headless _thing_ they'd dragged up out of the lifestream and decided he needed to work on extending lives instead of ruining them.

In Junon, he has plenty of time to think about it. Plenty of time to spend just outside in the fields, with a gun practically attached to his own shoulder in the style he'd once thought of as a laughable fight against the inevitable. He doesn't stick to the rifle like the now-dead, now traitorous (Rufus had been right—not one single strand more of gray hair on the pictures of Veld's corpse) ex-Turk he's comparing himself to. Rufus exercises his patience with a mantra of shotgun reports, a mandala of spent red casings that he picks up and stubbornly refills. Rufus pays for his world with a different currency now; his time. His freedom. His potential. 

_I can't go with you_ , Tseng had said. Their last conversation a muted, hush-toned rush over PHS. Rufus pictures it in his mind as a face to face conversation _That's how we buy the future, we put faith in stocks now._

Racking the shotgun is more satisfying than pulling the bolt, a visceral yanking motion with his hand curled around the wooden pump handle like a lover's dick. He thought of Tseng when he was savage with it; thought of Tseng also when the gun jumped hard back against his collar bone, striking a bruise into skin where teeth had once bitten him.

Tseng isn't with him, so Rufus uses his time this way, learning to protect himself with a means other than money. With a thousand pellets of soft steel at high velocity. He thinks of it like a bite.

At night, late, on the PHS with Tseng (it has to be late; Turks are night creatures and it trails into morning before they go off duty) Rufus rubs the purple marks on his skin and listens to the deep voice and the sounds of laughter and clinking dishes. Tseng in public, masterfully composed even with Rufus whispering lewd promises. Rufus alone in his metal apartment, tone low and back to the cameras. He is not much more alone than Tseng, but better able to pretend.

Rufus squeezes the trigger and watches the patternboard get a new set of marks. He pauses and considers, as if reading his future in spatters of wood and black paint.

"Boss," a familiar voice — no one calls him Vice-President anymore. Barely anyone uses anything but his name with a sneer attached. He's not upset by it — but Reno's voice and respect warms him a little. 

He thumbs the safety over, revealing a black circle instead of a red one. "Reno. No one told me you were coming."

Reno is his usual dishevel, a poorly fitted mess slung over a sloppy too-thin frame. He has a grin like razor-wire when he wants to, but today he doesn't use it. His hands are slung into his slouching pockets. 

"Well, I didn't come official, yo. I just thought maybe I'd come grab a couple of drinks at the Shot Bar on my off day, since the 'chopper was headed up already," Reno finishes with a grin, straight mischief.

The concept of an 'off day' was almost laughable. Rufus remembers Tseng getting calls at all hours, every day of the week. He remembers Rude or Cissnei half asleep on the couch in his office, where he'd ignored their less-than-ready appearance. "Why'd you really come?"

"For real, a drink." Reno says.

Something's missing. Something more than the truth. Rufus puts his shotgun in the protective tactical case he'd carried it to the range in and asks about the missing piece. "Where's your partner?"

"Well," Reno scratches the back of his neck at the hairline, an absent gesture. _Here's the truth of it._

"Rude's escorting a scientific specimen from the labs to the science team here. Something about powering the canon."

Rufus isn't surprised. Construction on that massive eyesore was chugging along without any real guarantee that the Junon reactor—or _any_ reactor—could generate enough power to fire his father's ridiculous compensation machine.

"And you?" he asks Reno.

"I want a Junon Jumper and a good poker opponent," Reno affirms.

"Alright," Rufus allows. He locks the shotgun into his trunk and they swing into his car, Rufus missing the days when he'd had a driver—usually Tseng. His own driving has mellowed some, but not enough to keep Reno from a surprised yelp as he spins out of the dirt parking lot with gravel pinging off the undercarriage and back bumper.

He's laughing by the time Rufus bottoms out the speedometer, one hand on the oh shit bar over the passenger side window and the other braced against the center console, his body tense and bouncing as Rufus abuses the shocks.

He doesn't say 'stop'. Reno never does. 

At the bar, Rufus feels better. Feels alive. Feels the manic edge of his own smile, teeth bared at the whole world around him. This backwater military town, with its tired backwards residents, they're all the enemy and they're all around him. For now, for this moment, Rufus has an ally. He presses his drink against his smile and strains it through his teeth—vodka and lemon.

Tseng's drink. His vice.

"Hey," Reno says, when Rufus beats him to the finish line. "Where'd you learn to drink like that?"

Rufus puts his glass back on the table, meeting the bartender's gaze to be sure his need for a refill is understood.

"I grew up with you assholes," he says. He doesn't have to worry about driving home, his apartment is up the street amongst the military accommodations and up some stairs. Basic. It's supposed to teach him humility.

It's just taught him not to go home.

"Sad to say, we're probably the best influences you even had, yo," Reno realizes, leaning back as if struck by the thought.

"I wouldn't go that far," Rufus says. Then, to the bartender, "leave the bottle."

Reno finishes his first glass, grinning against the rim. " _Tseng_ was a good influence."

Rufus snorts. "Tseng threw me onto the sparring mats on the gym floor so many times I cracked my tailbone."

"You kept going back though."

Rufus had. There was a lesson in persistence and patience both. He'd never really gotten any better at any fancy, disciplined martial arts, but Rufus learned — and valued this lesson well — to cheat inventively.

"Well," he says, after they both pour a second round into their glasses—more civil than just passing the bottle. "I kept him, didn't I? All that perseverance paid off."

"I think that had more to it than a few dust ups," Reno says. "Though all that shit with Avalanche..."

Rufus knows Reno tries to avoid thinking about it. He lives on a forward rolling railcar, like those old black and white movies with a man furiously pumping on a handcar while monsters chased him from behind. If he doesn't see how close they are, they can't get any closer.

Rufus can relate. He can relate his way through a whole bottle of good Vodka with Reno before Rude joins them, with his eyes on the one empty chair at their table. In this exile, Rufus is free to flirt with his old life, but he can't borrow it back, not even for an evening.   
-


	7. Chapter 7

On the third day in the same clothes - Elena has no idea where she'd get fresh ones, her apartment has gone from 60 floors up to sub-basement and all of her belongings except what she's wearing were in it- Elena sneaks into the surgeon's showers. There's soap but no shampoo and she does the best she can with it. That's all anyone's doing these days.

She gets bad coffee from the quiet cafeteria, passing by a dozen people looking shocked and exhausted. Elena hasn't had time. When she returns to Tseng's room, tying her hair up off her neck while it's still wet, she finds Reno standing by the tiny console table they allot each patient for belongings. He has a bouquet in his hands and a lost expression.

"I hope those yellow ones aren't chrysanthemums," Elena tells him. Reno jumps, a jerking motion that rocks his whole frame. He turns, grinning - it isn't quite sheepish.

"No," Reno says. "Daisies,why?"

"In Wutai, yellow chrysanthemums are for funerals," she says. 

Reno looks down at the flowers in his hands, wrapped up in cellophane. They don't transform into venomous snakes, and Elena wonders where he even found them. They don't look half bad - then she realizes.

"Those aren't daisies, either. They're lilies," she says.

"Yeah."

"Did you get them from the church?"

Reno looks sheepish. "I watered the rest while I was there, though."

"Well," Elena says, emptying out the vase of it's old, wilted lilacs - she'd gotten them before the plate fell. "Tseng will appreciate the familiar touch."

"They're for you," Reno explains. "Well, I mean - you'll appreciate them more than he will until he wakes up."

He offers a charming smile. "Thanks for staying with him, 'laney."

She wonders if he means by extension, 'thanks for not jumping ship'. There would not be a better opportunity, if Elena's decided that all this ShinRa business sticks in her craw, than now. If she wanted - and this is a thought that's crossed Reno's mind, and Rude's - she could get out clean.

"Thanks for the flowers," Elena says. "I'm sure Tseng will get to see them."

"Me too," Reno says. "Turks are tough, yo. We got extra lives like cats, or video games."

Elena thinks wistfully of the arcade at Gold Saucer. If only everything could be that easy. When you failed, you just pumped in another half-gil piece and you tried again.

"How's Rufus?" she asks.

"Kind of a mess," Reno admits. His hands slip guiltily into his pockets after he sets down the flowers. "I guess better than if he'd been in his office while Weapon blew it up, but that escape hatch was seventy stories almost straight down, from what he looked like at the bottom."

"Why didn't the President use it?" she asks the question it hadn't seemed appropriate to ask until now.

Reno's expression is confused. Elena realizes her question was unclear. She tries again.

"When Sephiroth came for him, why didn't Rufus' father use the hatch?"

"Hell if I know," Reno answers, without pause to think back. It seems both recent and distant to her as well, though technically it was 'before her time'. "He was probably too fat to fit, or Sephiroth got the jump on him like everyone else, I guess."

At this point, it hardly matters. Tower, escape hatch, and former President all no longer exist. With a little luck, Sephiroth and Jenova won't for much longer, either. Elena doesn't know what to hope for. She's heard every imaginable outcome. Cloud and his team are dead; that they've already killed Sephiroth; that Sephiroth is still alive in the Northern Crater. That wold is bigger than the one she exists in.

"When we can move Rufus, we're going to try heading to Kalm," Reno says. "It's not a bad idea to lay low, you know?"

Possibly forever. Elena doesn't like the thought. she couldn't imagine life as anything other than a Turk.

"What's he going to do?" Elena asks.

Reno shakes his head. "Dunno yet. to be honest, we're not sure what we can do, yet."

"Better start taking stock of what we have left," Elena suggests.

Reno adjusts the flowers in the vase, pulling the cellophane off and shifting them around. "Why? You think folks are gonna try and steal it?"

"I think people need a lot of things right now," Elena says. "Better if we're seen giving it to them than waiting for them to steel it anyway."

Reno turns a surprised gaze on her.

"How could we even defend it?" she points out. "There's just the four of us, and who knows how many warehouses."

"It's not that," Reno says. "You're right. I mean, it's just <i>smart</i>. Nobody else thought of it that way."

Elena feels her cheeks getting warmer. "Well, it's just that I know what it feels like to have nothing and be looking at someone who has everything you need. There's going to be a lot more of them than us."

Reno smiles. "Wish we'd had you years ago. Director Veld would have liked you."

He reaches up with one finger extended to poke her gently between the eyebrows, like he was trying to high-five her brain very carefully.

"I know," Elena says, enjoying her chance to be mysterious.


	8. Chapter 8

"So, Boss really lost it, huh?" Reno asks - he's managed to con a few more pillows out of the nursing staff, enough to sit propped up in the rickety old bed.

Rude's expression changes only a little - his gaze drops behind his dark glasses. He'd seen it, too.

"I mean, sure, of course he's stressed out, but I never thought I'd see him hit Aerith."

Rude looks up. _He didn't expect it, either._

"I don't think he likes any of this. It's not the standard shit - stealing secrets, sending messages, delivering threats," Reno laments.

Truth be told, he didn't like any of it either - not dropping the plate, not all of this singing and dancing theatrical bullshit. He followed orders, but he didn't have to like them. That's why Reno's a Turk and not a SOLDIER.

"Maybe it's just me who doesn't like it," Reno says, shifting in agitation. "Why'd AVALANCHE have to start all this shit, huh?"

Rude's shoulders lift, then fall.

"I mean, blowing up a reactor isn't exactly benign. That _wants_ a response. You gotta fight big with big, yo."

"I miss it too," Rude says. Reno knows he doesn't mean the reactor, but sector 7. Sure, it was an underplate shit hole, but it had charm. Reno had grown up - much as he'd ever grown up - in four. He knew the underplate air, the streets lined with more garbage than buildings, the weak light that only came in at angles. A part of that was gone, now. A great big hole that sunlight channels down through, illuminating the mess.

"Yeah, well," Reno says, pretending to be tough - he's already paid for his part in it. The decision hadn't been his, he'd just punched the code. "No use for nostalgia, buddy."

Rude nods.

"It's okay for you to be here?"

Rude nods.

"No work to do?"

"It's been quiet," Rude says.

Reno bets. It's still too fresh. People would still be sorting out the wreckage - who's dead, who's alive, whether their losses were total and what could be stolen or recovered - nobody would have time to fuck with ShinRa until Avalanche showed up. They <i>would</i> \- they were harder to kill than cockroaches and Rude. Reno has a report that they'd been seen in 6, visiting the house with yellow flowers (as he thought of it) and poking around.

They're not done yet.

"So who's gonna do the work?" Reno asks, more to himself than any expectation Rude will answer. "I s'ppose they'll want me out of bed tomorrow."

Rude shakes his head. "New-hire."

"What?" Reno demands, sitting up higher. 

Rude clears his throat. "Tseng requested a new recruit to help cover."

It's a lot of words for Rude, and yet conveys only the most limited of information.

"What's he think a rookie is gonna do?" Reno asks, grouchy. He doesn't like the thought of being incapacitated and out of the action. He doesn't like the thought of replacement. 

Rude shrugs again. A rookie would keep boots on the ground while Reno recovers. Tseng's going to have his hands full with managing antsy executives and angry citizens - when they figure out how to be angry again around all the shock.

"Well, who is it?" Reno asks.

Rude hesitates. Reno realizes that he doesn't think he'll like the answer. He already doesn't like it, so it can't get worse.

Rude passes Reno a dossier. He only has to look for a second. He _doesn't_ like it.

"She's just a kid," Reno protests.

Rude's blunt pointer finger taps on the series of accolades in the file - her awards of top marks and how many times she's been at the top of her class. 

Reno sighs. He can't find any faults, really, but he doesn't like the choice.

"Tseng really knows how to drag up the past, huh?" Reno asks. He folds the dossier closed and hands it back to Rude, then puts his hands behind his head to think.

Rude nods, agreeing.

In the hospital, Reno will have plenty of times to come to terms with it.

"Hey, partner?" he says, as Rude stands up and collects the small leather slipcase he'd carried the reports in.

Rude stops, waiting.

"Don't get too attached to lil'sis," Reno warns, summoning up his best grin. "I'll be back in your hair in no time."

One corner of Rude's mouth quirks up, the joke old between them. He lifts his gloved hand and passes his palm back and forth over his bald pate, pointing out the obvious flaw in Reno's words.

Then, he's on his way.


	9. Chapter 9

Rude comes in with the doctor, a silent pillar of a man that Elena has always found more reassuring than intimidating somehow. He’s big, sure, and she’s seen him practically put his fist  _ through _ some people, but he’s on her side. 

“You made it,” she says, as the doctor fiddles with Tseng’s charts, checking the course and schedule of his treatment as if she hasn’t been here to make sure not a single itemized thing didn’t get missed. 

He nods at her and she can see that his looming figure doesn’t put the doctor at ease. Something’s happening. 

“It should be safe to move him,” the doctor says, and then he pushes the clipboard with the charts into Elena’s hands. “So long as wherever you’re bringing him is qualified to continue his  _ intensive _ care.”

Elena looks up at Rude, surprised by the turn of events. He gives her a sidelong glance around his sunglasses that promises as much of an explanation as he ever offers when he’s in one of his rare moods—or stuck without Reno to do his talking for him.

“I’m sure we have the facilities,” she takes the charts, clipboard and all. “Thanks for what you’ve done so far.”

_ Which is mostly ignored us in favor of other emergencies. _ She keeps that to herself. It won’t do any good.

“I can’t spare any nurses or staff to accompany your transport,” the doctor sounds apologetic, and then seeming to remember he’s in a room full of Turks, he glances up nervously at Rude. “Sorry. We’re short-staffed as it is, and at capacity. I could probably call someone in—”

Rude shakes his head. “Bird’s on the roof. We’ve got it from here.”

To his credit, the doctor actually looks askance at Elena—his main point of contact, the one he’s seen sitting her for these long days. She doesn’t second-guess Rude. If the arrangements are to his standards, she trusts him. She nods, straightening her back and hoping she gives an impression of confidence half so efficient as Rude’s.

The doctor leaves them alone in the space that’s been her world while the rest crumples unevenly in the grip of forces far greater than her.

“Where’s Reno?” she asks.

“Helicopter,” he says. Rude moves for the hospital bed, carefully investigating all of the attached equipment for stability. “On the roof. Making sure no one gets any ideas.”

Rude secures the oxygen tank to the bed, and Elena realizes he means to take the whole thing, so she springs into action to secure the saline drip keeping him hydrated, and between the pair of them they get the whole apparatus rolling and using the old Turk trick of moving with importance and purpose they commandeer Tseng’s care without a whisper of protest.

“Rufus is awake,” Rude tells her, as she stands beside the bed in the elevator, the light seeming to bring a different color to Tseng’s skin. She’s watching him breathe, unable to fully shake her concern. “He sent us.”

“We’re going to Kalm?” she asks, looking up just barely. Enough to take in Rude’s nod of assent. “Will it be alright there? I mean, for—”

Rude knows what she means without her having to finish the sentence. He nods in a two part motion, up-down with a hesitation, and then up-down again. “As alright as—”

This time he doesn’t finish his sentence, but he reaches out one of his hands and takes hers, his palm big and sturdy against the back of hers, reassuring with the strength and ability to destroy turned to purpose and protection. She turns her hand around and holds his, too.

“Was he mad about the supplies I told Reno to give away?” she wonders if she should expect a dressing-down from Rufus on arrival.

Rude shakes his head and maybe he smiles—or grimaces— “The opposite.”

She feels relief as the elevator doors open onto the roof helipad access, even as the light—real sunlight, even through all the hell and haze of the world—hurts her eyes with how long she’s been out of it.”

-


	10. Chapter 10

“What should I say to him?” Elena asks, the first time they convince her to drop the serious facade and come out drinking with them. 

Rude has to take a minute to guess which ‘him’ she’s asking about, but Reno’s gone to the head and she must be asking Rude, so he waits for her to spool out more information, pouring another short from the shared bottle at the center of the table.

“I mean,” she continues, in a soft slur, her cheek pillowed morosely on her arm on the tabletop, enough to smush her face cutely. She examines her mostly-empty glass.

She’s had five, which impresses Rude, anyway. At her size, he’d have figured she’d bee on the floor already. All it’s done is made her introspective and a little melancholy. Not weaker, just clouded her usual alacrity. “I can never tell if I’ve done anything right, he just  _ looks _ at you with—his eyes—big, pretty, dark,  _ stupid _ eyes—and it’s like he could stab you with a thought.”

_ Oh. _ Rude can put the description together with the run of events, and he figures her out. He wonders if she’d appreciate knowing Reno said almost the same thing, once, before he figured out how to needle Tseng out of his armor enough to get to their boss’ soft underbelly. Probably, she wouldn’t. 

“He never raises his voice, I’ve never seen him lose his  _ cool _ ,” she sighs, tilting her glass back and forth in her fingers. The amber whiskey winds through the spaces in the ice to pool against the side of the glass, first one way, then the other. “But never really gives praise, either. I mean.”

Sitting up suddenly, she finishes the last sip in her glass and reaches for the bottle to pour another. “I didn’t take this job for praise, of course I didn’t.”

She sets the bottle back down firmly enough to make a dull sound on the scarred, wooden tabletop. There’s perfect control on her violence—like all of them, she’s too well trained to be prone to an excess of force except for when it’s called for. “I worked my  _ ass _ off for this job. I don’t need somebody else to tell me what I’m good for. But, doesn’t he ever smile or anything?”

“Tseng?” Rude asks, thinking of the occasions he’s seen it happen; always a calculated allowance in public. But in private—with Rufus, now or, Veld years ago, or moments when Tseng has been moved outside of himself and relieved of his stony exterior by method of very clever persuasion.

Elena rolls her eyes toward him while she drinks, as if just remembering Rude is there, and not some immovable wall with ‘free therapy’ written on it. She swallows and asks more pointedly. “Don’t  _ you _ ? I thought we’d all get to enjoy our jobs.”

Rude is struck by that somehow, and then he thinks back to the whole pile of shit they’ve been wading through since the plate fell, and realizes it  _ hasn’t _ been the same. He laughs, and her eyes hone in on him like a laser sight, fixing on his face before he can get a hand over it to compose himself.  _ She _ smiles, too, and Rude thinks he sees the problem. He coughs into his hand and gathers his voice, careful to keep any humor out of it.

“He does smile,” Rude admits, wishing Reno would come save him from the brunt of his conversation, he has a knack for running over lewdness until it doesn’t seem improper anymore. That’s just how he communicates. It’s helpful in making facts seem like—well, facts. “When he’s satisfied.”

Elena’s gaze goes suddenly clear and focused on Rude, like he’s just surprised her somehow.  _ Things have just been so hectic,  _ he reminds himself. Maybe she hasn’t heard the rumors—or doesn’t know how to interpret them, yet. “What does that mean?”

Rude clears his throat and wishes he could evade the subject. Maybe he can fake a call from Tseng himself? Hmm, no—maybe Heidegger?

“Rude,” Elena tilts her head, staring more closely at him, trying to see through his sunglasses and into his depths. “What does  _ that _ mean?” 

Reno picks that moment to slam down a fresh bottle on the table, jumping them both and losing a delighted laugh to see them startle.

“Stop flirting,” Reno laughs, slinking into his seat with all the composure of a king taking court. “It’s our day off.” 

-


	11. Chapter 11

Rufus greets them at the door, making a valiant effort to look hale and whole and proud while sitting pale and shaky in a powered wheelchair. Elena recognizes it as a sign of respect for them, an attempt to reassure the few loyal men he still has.

The hospice house is well appointed, and more home than the white walls of the hospital—better decorated than all the sterility she’s lived in for the past few weeks.  _ Leave it to Rufus to find a way to make money matter, even now. _

“How is he?” Rufus asks her, once they’ve transferred Tseng into the care of the waiting staff.

“Alive,” she says, wishing she could offer more. “I don’t think that’s because Sephiroth wasn’t  _ trying _ to kill him.”

Rufus lifts a hand to his own face, bruised and pale but unscarred. He’ll keep his looks and livelihood and any scars from this he can hide under the pale coat he always wears to imply virtue to people who understand it in a way differently to the version practiced in the corporate aristocracy of ShinRa. The merit of loyalty was hard fought for him, built upon the shaky foundation of worth but bolstered up until it could grow.

“How about you, sir?” she asks, tucking her hands behind her back. It might have been out of place before, but the end of the world has made men even of the mighty.

“I’ll survive,” Rufus says. Then his hand curls around the arm of the chair and grips on with strength. “ShinRa will survive.”

If anyone could make that true by sheer willpower, it’s him. Elena knows better than to offer reassurance, the fact she’s still here is more of that than words could be.

“We have some things for you,” Rufus offers. “Clothes, a room—quarters.”

He corrects himself to something more formal, though she’s sure the first description is more accurate. 

“I haven’t had a proper shower in…” she has to think about it, but even then no solid answer comes to mind. “A while.”

“Of course,” Rufus says—in his exhaustion, he almost sounds kind. “Up the hall at the very end on the right. There’s a private bathroom.”

She lingers, standing next to him with her eyes on Tseng as the private nurses get him arranged, handling Tseng and his equipment like fine glass. She hates to see it. “Will you come get me right away if he…”

Rufus nods, leaving the pressure off her optimism. “Thank you for watching him this whole time.”

She’s not sure what else she could have done.

-


	12. Chapter 12

It’s Elena who descends rapid-pace into the eerie and howling halls of the temple, heeding the worried and whispered communication from her source. Her heart pounds and every so often the place gets to her, flickering eternal torches and ghostly music she can’t quite hear. 

Though she doesn’t have to go too far it’s enough. She can smell the blood. She has seen a lot in her life; changed that by an exponential power after joining the Turks in just the short time she’s served, but the whispered echoes of violence that wash against her senses like the very  _ walls _ will never forget what transpired—it makes the hair on the back of her arms stand up, like someone was about to call Ramuh out of the very air.

She finds Tseng slumped against a pillar, bloodied and pale and very still, and the sight freezes her. It lodges a spike in her thoughts that feels like it holds her still longer than possible—she’s moving, but it feels strange. Like Elena is watching herself from a distance; reviewing footage from her training. 

So, it surprises her when she reaches out and pats—way more firmly than she would have dared if she wasn’t half-sure he was already dead—his face. It’s not quite a slap but it’s enough to provoke a reflexive action, to stimulate Tseng’s well-honed threat senses even if they’ve gone deep as his consciousness. He doesn’t wake, exactly, there’s so much blood on the ground that she’s hastily reaching for her stash of potions. He’s alive but every moment counts. Every second is one where that fact could change. 

It’s in this moment where she’s outside of herself—holding strong within herself, to get the man who keeps everything together off the floor—that she really first feels like a Turk. She belongs, by her own virtue, on her own merit. She hoists Tseng up ingracefully once the curatives have done what they can.

“It thought you were the one holding us all together,” she tells him, dragging him awkwardly, her hands hooked under his armpits, touching intimately while he’s vulnerable. The distant half-heard music is maddening, but she keeps her mind focused. “But I guess it turns out we all are.”

-

When he wakes up again—really wakes up, instead of the brief flirtations with consciousness he’s been making for the last 48 hours—she thinks maybe they’re finally out of the woods. The looming, red threat of Meteor is gone, and the news is that Sephiroth has gone with it. Jenova’s call for the planet to end rebuffed by the planet itself and the will of the Ancients manifesting within the lifestream or any one of a dozen theories she can’t understand.

It’s not what matters at the moment. His hand comes up to catch hold of hers and she hangs on, leaning in closer.

“Elena,” he says, his voice a little hoarse, but warming up. “You stayed.”

“We all did,” she says, and then with a laugh she can’t help, “You owe me dinner.”

-

The End.


End file.
